Anger and Avarice
by KBoz
Summary: Homunculi don't have souls. When they pass through the Gate of Life and Death, there is no turning back. Greed used to believe that, once. Now, he's not so sure. And when he is given the opportunity to return to the world he left behind, there is one question he must ask himself: "What are you willing to lose?"
1. Something Lost

_Ling looked up at the familiar soul before him in shock, hands trembling uncontrollably. "How could you lie? You always told me you don't believe in telling lies!"_

_A laugh. "That was the one and only lie of my life!" A pause. "Lan Fan has a philosopher's stone. So you don't even need me anymore, kid!"_

"_But I do, Greed! Don't do this!" He reached out again, as though he could somehow close the gap and save his friend, the Homunculus, from being reclaimed by Father. His fingers caught nothing but the empty darkness of his mind._

"_Later, kid." The sharp-toothed grin did nothing to dull the pain. Ling felt the salty sting of tears piercing the corners of his eyes. _

"_**Greed, NO!" **_

_The Homunculus was gone._

* * *

Ling woke to the sound of his own screaming, sweat and tears mingling equally on his cheeks as he momentarily stayed trapped in the consciousness between awareness and sleep. He breathed, in and out, felt the watery trails etch their way down his cheeks, and heard them drip softly onto the collar of his robes.

There was a moment of stillness as silent sobs wracked the young emperor of Xing's body. His white fingers dug tightly into the bedsheets as though they were the only things keeping him tethered to reality.

And he wept.

He wept until he could no longer feel the scalding heat of the tears coursing down his face, until he could no longer feel the gaping emptiness inside of him that he used to share with another soul. Until he did not remember Greed or his own name or where he was, until his existence became a blur of pain and an emotion that even he could not name.

Ling didn't know how long he stayed that way. He only knew that a soft, almost gentle knock on his door brought him crashing back to reality.

"Young Lord?" came a hesitant voice from beyond the doors. "Young Lord, are you alright?"

The question was merely a courtesy. Lan Fan knew that Ling was as far from alright as he could possibly be. It was almost as steady as clockwork each night; Ling would jolt awake with a scream and stay that way until he had wept all of the tears he had to weep.

Lan Fan only knew this because, each night, she would stand vigil outside the young emperor's door. She sat with only a thin mat for comfort, her back leaned against the wall and her sword at her side. The Young Lord had yet to realize that she did so, and she was reluctant to tell him for fear that he would order her to leave. She knew more than anyone that Ling needed someone to be there, if only to show that someone cared.

His mind was so fragile with the Homunculus gone.

"Everything is...fine," Ling almost choked on the words as he buried his tear-stained face in his hands, which were now shaking more intensely than they had the previous nights. "Leave me, Lan Fan. I wish to be alone."

"Yes, Young Lord," came the swift reply. And then another pause. Then, "If you need anything, Young Lord, you need only summon me."

Ling's only response was silence as her soft footseps faded out of earshot. He closed his eyes and fought back the urge to call after her.

What could she do? What did he _want_ her to do?

Comfort him?

He laughed bitterly at the thought. She had hated Greed, and no matter how loyal Lan Fan was to him, that would not change. No matter how much he cared for her and longed for her and _loved _her, she could not possibly understand the way Greed had.

For somewhere along that thin line of hatred and friendship, while Ling had shared his consciousness with the Homunculus, they had acknowleged their like-mindedness. Greed and Ling's thoughts were nearly one and the same. And somehow, it felt complete. As though a part of himself had been missing his entire life and he had only just discovered it.

And then it had been torn from him and was replaced by the nothingness that threatened to consume him on nights like these, when he would wake from dreams that seemed too painful to be dreams and too distant to be memories.

Always the same.

_Always the same._

Ling closed his eyes and silently prayed that sleep would claim him.

* * *

Greed stared up at the Gate before him.

No matter where he tried to go, it was always there. Waiting. As though it knew that he was trying to escape and was determined to catch him no matter what the cost.

He had only been through the Gate one way, after he had been killed by Father. He was not eager to pass through it a second time.

"All right, what's the deal? How come this thing keeps following me everywhere?"

Greed himself wasn't exactly sure where 'everywhere' was at the moment. He was dead. Or as dead as a Homunculus could be, which again, he was not sure of. This was neither Heaven nor Hell, but everything and nothing at once and it was driving him mad. Time had no meaning in this place, sometimes passing so quickly that he felt as though his entire life had occurred in a moment, and sometimes so slowly that he wondered if this was eternity.

"You _know_ why, Homunculus."

Greed snapped his head toward the source of the voice. At first there was nothing, just the white blankness that he had become accustomed to in this place. Then a form slowly began to take shape before the Gate, human-but-not-human, soul-but-not-soul, and Homunculus-but-not-Homunculus all at once.

His soul felt as though it was being pulled toward the figure at the Gate, and he forced himself not to move an inch.

"What would you know?" he spat, glaring at the _thing_ that had spoken to him so haughtily.

It offered a laugh that turned his blood to ice. "More than you ever could, Homunculus. I am Truth, and I see that you know why I have come."

Greed paled.

"I am correct, am I not, Greed?" Truth almost purred, a terrifying grin the only feature on its blank face. "You know what I have the power to give you and you want it. You long for it. You _crave _it."

The pull was growing and Greed felt his hold slipping on his odd new reality. "And what's that?"

Time. He needed time. He needed to run. Because he knew what Truth was saying and it was right. He wanted things, he _was _want, he _was _desire, he _was _longing. But even he could not resist his own greed.

"Life."

And Greed stopped his struggles and was pulled closer to the Truth, until he stood before the Gate. So close that he could reach out and touch the doorway between Life and Death itself. His hands ached to feel the smooth caress of the metal beneath his fingertips.

"I can give you life."

Then his mind remembered itself and he stared directly into the face of Truth.

Nothing came without a price; the Elric brothers were living, breathing proof of that. And nothing, nothing at all, was more expensive than life.

Greed was suddenly gripped with an overpowering, terrifying fear.

"I don't want it."

That was a lie. The very words _screamed _that they were a lie. The waver in his voice as he said them proved it. The way he suddenly felt as though he had to look anywhere but Truth and the Gate showed him the glaring, painfully obvious fact that he was _lying_. Lying to himself.

The feeling still felt foreign to him.

"We both know that's not how you _really _feel," hissed Truth, the malice in its grin turned to murder. "And I am offering you exactly what it is that you want."

Greed swallowed and suddenly felt like the presence of this thing called Truth was strangling him. He felt the tremors in his hands and pretended that they weren't there, closed his eyes and tried to think rationally.

_Fool! _

Greed's eyes shot open and suddenly he wasn't staring at Truth, but at Ling. That idiot of a Xingese prince who had taught him more about himself than he would ever admit to anyone.

_You turned your back on something you wanted! _

The tremors in his hands were inescapable now. Greed stared with wide eyes down at his palms, his Ouroboros marking nearly as translucent as his pale white skin. It flickered between existence and nonexistence, as it had ever since he had come through the Gate.

He could feel himself fading.

_**You don't deserve to call yourself Greed!**_

His head snapped up and he glared defiantly into the face of Truth, an unspoken agreement etched into every shadow and curve of his pale face.

The figure grinned in response.

If Truth wanted to think that it had won, then so be it. Greed _would_ pass through that Gate again.

Even if it was just to prove that idiot wrong.

* * *

The grounds of the palace were seemingly asleep. The only proof that there was a single living soul inside was the presence of a weakly flickering candle in a window on the second floor.

Two guards stationed underneath the archway leading to the palace doors spoke rapidly to each other in hushed tones of Xingese. The night had long since settled in like a dark shroud, with only a few faint stars and a ghost-like half moon hanging from the sky to illuminate the ground below. The guards had heard the rancour from the palace as they had the night before, but knew better than to question. It was not their place.

Instead they stood as twin statues, eyes long since accustomed to the dark scanning the perimeter of the palace grounds for any sign of movement. Not that anything was expected. The palace was secure, and the possibility of an attempt on the emperor's life was so remote that even the Young Lord had scoffed at the notion.

So the figure silhouetted against the night sky was a shock to the warriors beneath the archway. Their hands immediately flew to their weapons, one closed around the hilt of a sword and the other around the handle of a dagger, both poised to strike.

Yet the figure had stopped moving.

It took two steps and seemingly froze where it stood. Then the silhouette sank to its knees with a dull gasp and collapsed, unconscious, several yards beyond the arch. For a moment, the guards stood and stared dumbfoundedly at the now-visible young man shrouded in black who lay unmoving on the ground.

Warily, they crept forward, closing the gap between themselves and the body until they were situated directly above it. One of the warriors knelt down and cautiously turned the young man on his side, so that his slender face was visible beneath the sharp black bangs that obscured his pale features.

The two soldiers immediately drew back in dismay.

"Young Lord!"

Neither of them had noticed the faint Ouroboros markings on the man's left hand.


	2. Something Found

Greed wasn't supposed to be alive.

May, Ling, the Elrics, Lan Fan herself—they had all watched him die. She had helped him save the Young Lord's life, and Father had killed him. Lan Fan had been there. She _knew_ that.

Or at least she thought she had.

And yet there he was, unconscious and pale, collapsed in a heap a mere few yards from the palace.

The guards had mistaken him for Ling, but she had known better. The Young Lord was in his chambers, exactly where she had left him. He would not—_could _not—have left the palace without passing her by in the corridor, and Lan Fan was inclined to think that she would have noticed if he had done so. She knew him too well to miss something like that.

But Lan Fan didn't know the Homunculus.

Even when the Homunculus and the Young Lord had shared a body, it had been the same. With Ling in control, Lan Fan was comforted by the fact that she knew his limits; she knew what he could and couldn't do, and she could tell him so. He trusted her, and vice versa.

And when the Homunculus took over...

He was unpredictable. His demeanor changed. He was reckless, he was foolish, and he was dangerous not only to himself but to everyone around him. The Homunculus trusted her no more than she trusted him, if one could even say that trust _existed_.

His limits? Lan Fan was nearly convinced that he had none. His loyalties? They were as inconsistent as a breeze in autumn. His motivation? She liked to think she knew that much: Greed followed his own goals.

But then he had sacrificed himself to save the Young Lord, and the tentative picture she had created of him fell apart before her eyes. It was like she had put a difficult puzzle back together will all of the pieces facing upside-down, only to see when she had finished that the image was all wrong.

The Homunculus was a mystery again.

And it scared her.

"Miss Lan Fan?"

Lan Fan's thoughts jolted back to the present: sitting with May in the palace infirmary, Greed lying on a mat on the floor beside them. The younger Xingese girl was sitting cross-legged on the other side of the unconscious Homunculus, her braids bouncing slightly as she shifted to remove a lukewarm washcloth from Greed's forehead.

"What's wrong, Miss Lan Fan?" Lan Fan noted the concern in the young princess's voice, and she allowed herself a hint of a reassuring smile to pull at the corners of her mouth.

"Nothing you need to worry yourself over, May." Lan Fan leaned over and picked up another cloth, dipping it into the bowl of cool water next to Greed's head. "I was just lost in thought."

Her gaze flitted down to the Homunculus again and his gaunt face shifted between pain and calm, lines crossing his brow. A few beads of sweat trickled from his forehead to his chin, and when she pressed the cool washcloth to his skin, she could feel the fever through his forehead.

"It doesn't look like the fever is from sickness," Lan Fan mused, sitting back on her heels. "Do you know what's causing it, May? I'm a fighter, not a healer, so I'm afraid my ideas aren't really worth much in this case."

May glanced up from wringing out the damp waschloth that had previously been resting on Greed's forehead, her cheeks pouting out in thought. "I think you're right, though, Miss Lan Fan. He's not sick. Maybe Mister Greed's just really tired? Mister Scar sometimes got sick when we were traveling because he pushed himself too hard."

"Perhaps."

Lan Fan couldn't help but wonder at May's simple acceptance of the entire situation. The young girl hadn't asked a single question about the Homunculus's presence, instead calmly treating the supposed-to-be-dead young man without batting an eyelash. She seemed to have stopped wondering about strange things quite a while ago, and Lan Fan couldn't blame her. After all of the insanity concerning Father and the other Homunculi, there were few things left in the world that could surprise either of them. Apparently someone returning from the dead was not included in those few things, at least in May's case.

Lan Fan failed to stifle a yawn as she realized how long it had been since she had last slept. She had barely rested at all that night, or the previous night, or—never mind, she decided. It was too long to count and it would only make her even more exhausted.

"Miss Lan Fan, you look sleepy," May noted innocently, stifling a little yawn of her own. "You should probably go rest."

The young Xingese warrior raised an eyebrow at her companion, attempting to pass off her yawn as a cough. "No, May, it's quite alright...I'm not"-she yawned again, and silently cursed her body for needing sleep. Why was that a thing?-"tired..."

May giggled and crossed her arms, assuming the most intimidating expression that a eleven-year-old could muster in an effort to press her point. Lan Fan couldn't stop herself from chuckling when she noticed how much the young princess's angry face looked like her older brother's trademark pout. "You _are _tired! See? You just yawned! And you almost laughed! Ling said that you don't laugh unless you're really tired or sick!"

Lan Fan didn't have the heart to be offended, simply offering a grudging half-smile in response to the younger girl's accusation. She couldn't exactly argue if May wasn't wrong.

"I can look after Mister Greed until he wakes up," the princess said with an air of finality. "You are going to go to bed."

"Yes, Princess May," Lan Fan acquiessed, with a quick bow and a soft smile hidden behind a curtain of black hair. "I'll send in Yun in the morning with some breakfast for the both of you. Don't forget to get some rest as well."

"I won't! And thank you, Miss Lan Fan."

"If he happens to wake up before then, send one of the servants to come and fetch me, all right?" Lan Fan asked seriously. "I'm not sure how the Young Lord would react to all of this, and I do not wish to wake him so early. The emperor needs his rest."

May nodded in understanding, reading Lan Fan's unspoken thoughts in her concerned tone. "I will, don't worry."

As Lan Fan stepped over the threshold leading out of the healing chambers, she felt a genuine smile grace her lips. "Thank you."

* * *

Greed was convinced that he was on fire.

Every single fiber of his being felt like it was ripping itself apart and putting itself back together again, _after _being tossed into a vat of boiling lava. It reminded him too much of his first "death" at Father's hands. And suddenly he could hear his own mad laughter ringing in his ears, blotting out everything else and dulling the pain-

And then he was suddenly cool. A pleasant chill that seemed to come from Heaven itself spread through his veins and drove the memories from his mind, beckoning for him to relax. Just breathe_-_

Greed let himself bask in the glorious, life-saving cold for what felt like an eternity. But something was slipping. He could feel himself being pulled out of the comforting arms of his dimly-lit consciousness, back into the reality he almost forgot existed.

And to his surprise, he didn't mind.

"Mister Greed?"

Greed groaned in response, then marveled at the fact that he was _speaking_. He was actually _speaking_ and someone could _hear_ him. Someone could _see _him.

"_Mister Greed!"_

And apparently, someone was now hugging him.

"Woah, woah, _woah!_ Hold it right there, sweetheart-this is getting a bit mushy for my tastes." Greed attempted to push the rather small body off of him, and was irritated to discover that his arms did nothing but scream in protest when he ordered them to move.

Well, there went that idea.

As his vision cleared from indistinct shapes and splotches of color into something his still-drunk-on-unconsciousness brain could process, he discovered that his apparent attacker was a small girl. Actually, the more he saw of her, the more certain he was that he recognized her—the idiot's little sister. May? He was reluctant to use the name, considering the fact that his brain (and subsequently his memory) was still not functioning at one hundred percent.

"Hey, doll? Mind getting off of me?"

Greed was weakly attempting to pry the Xingese girl's arms from their position tightly wound around his neck. She had somehow managed to get an iron grip on him and it didn't appear that she planned to let go at any point in the near future.

"Mister Greed, you're awake!"

Geez, the girl had a penchant for stating the obvious.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm alive and awake and that's all well and good—but can you _get off of me now?!_"

It appeared that he wasn't as threatening as he thought he sounded, as the young girl (what, eleven years old at the most?) made no move to untangle herself from the hug was currently imprisoned in. Greed coughed as his breathing was further constricted by the hug-slash-chokehold initiated by the girl, May.

"Hello?"

Eventually, May appeared to grow tired of attempting to squeeze the life out of him and drew back enough that he could get a good look at her. The last time he had seen the Xingese girl was before he died; he was surprised to find that she really hadn't changed much in the few months of his absence, aside from growing a few inches—enough so that she was taller standing than he was sitting up.

"I take it someone missed me," Greed deadpanned, eyebrows raised in surprise as he realized that her..._enthusiastic_ reaction was a result of his waking up. He was having much more fun than he should have with the whole _living _thing. "You the only one, sweetheart?"

Greed idly wondered where her little panda...cat..._thing _was, spotting the vacant spot on her shoulder where the little creature usually sat. Then he wondered where _he _was, realizing that he couldn't remember anything past collapsing from exhaustion. _Then _his body seemed to realize that it still wasn't fully recovered, and a twinge of agony flew up his spinal cord and out through his nerves into the rest of his body, causing his eyes to widen and his lips to part in a cry of pain as he collapsed back onto the finely woven mat beneath him.

The girl went into a panic, and Greed mentally cursed.

"Oh no! Mister Greed, are you alright?! I'm sorry, I forgot you weren't fully healed; I shouldn't have hugged you so tightly and-"

He tuned her out after a while and just listened to his suddenly rapid pulse pounding in his ears as his body attempted to compensate for the sudden burst of pain. His muscles seemed to lose their free will again, and for a moment his fingers twitched and he could feel each and every tense and relaxation while the bout of agony ran its course.

What was happening to him?

He wasn't weak.

He should be regenerating.

He should be healing.

_Why wasn't he healing?_

"-need to go get Miss Lan Fan!"

Greed managed to focus through the haze of pain enough to see May run off, presumably to find Lan Fan.

Oh, he remembered Lan Fan.

The warrior-girl who never left the idiot prince's side, with the automail arm and the spunk that would have put Envy to shame, if they'd ever met. He doubted that he would be able to forget _that_ girl, even if he tried.

Not that he was going to.

But until May returned with Lan Fan, Greed was stuck wallowing in his own misery, muscles pulsing at irregular intervals and his heartbeat as erratic as his usual changing desires.

It went something like this:

Twitch.

Pain.

_Ouch._

Wait.

Wait.

Still waiting.

_Any day now._

Twitch.

Agony.

_So help me-_

More waiting.

More waiting.

Even more waiting.

_Where the—it's not like she has to run halfway across the world!_

In the momentary pauses between episodes—the longer it got, the more he began to notice the itch on the tip of his nose that his arms refused to cooperate and scratch—Greed began to weigh the pros and cons of his deal with Truth.

The results weren't very encouraging.

* * *

**Okay. I'm not happy with this chapter.**

**I'm not happy with this chapter at all. In fact, I am planning on reworking it, reposting it, and changing some of the characterization. **

**But FEAR NOT! I shall post chapter three alongside the revision of this chapter as a big "I'm sorry for being a terrible author" present.**


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